Every day I receive hand-written letters from some of the most vulnerable people in our city. While they always start by evaluating the job I am doing, all of them ask me to help alleviate the financial struggles weighing them down: to reduce bus fares so they can continue to afford to work, to fight rising heating costs and to reduce the price of groceries. While I often cannot directly do anything about many of these issues, what I can do every day is make decisions with their interests in mind.

School funding debate

On May 9, the Syracuse Common Council voted 5-4 to raise city taxes by $2.4 million to provide more funding for the Syracuse City School District. The tax increase was roughly equal to the tax cut city residents received on their Onondaga County tax bills this year as a new sales-tax-sharing arrangement took effect.
Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner vetoed the tax increase May 12, saying city residents could not afford to pay more taxes.
Supporters of the tax increase plan a vote to override the mayor’s veto. A vote could come as early as Monday, when the council holds its regular meeting.
In this op-ed piece, Miner explains her rationale for vetoing the tax increase. Click here to read an op-ed piece by Fifth District Councilor Nader Maroun, who co-sponsored the tax increase, explaining why he thinks it’s necessary.

It is with these people in mind that I made the decision to veto the tax increase passed 5-4 by the Common Council. While some may say $50 is not a big deal, it is to our residents, who according to the census, are among some of the poorest people in our country. It is significant to people who hand-write letters with a hope that someone will help make their lives easier, while certainly not easy.

My proposed budget — one without the council’s added tax increase — included the exact budget the Superintendent and the Board of Education approved. The Syracuse City School District understood early on that the funding gap it faced was so massive that city taxpayers could not possibly shoulder the tax increase required to fill that gap.

Even proponents on the council who authored the $2.4 million tax increase acknowledge it is a small, symbolic gesture. The people of Syracuse don’t need symbolic gestures — they need transformational change. We need leaders to ask difficult questions and to stop funding past practices that aren’t generating results.

Mike Greenlar / The Post-StandardSyracuse Mayor Stephanie A. Miner

Consider these staggering numbers:

• State aid and tax levy revenues for the school district were $197 million in 2002 and are $314 million this year. While these revenues grew nearly 60 percent in less than a decade, citizens are left to wonder why graduation rates hover at or below an unacceptable 50 percent.

• Just two weeks ago, an outside firm, ERS, released a report detailing how the school district can shift resources to improve outcomes. When ERS studied the district’s staffing levels, it found that the SCSD had about twice as many teaching assistants as comparable districts. This translates to 300 to 400 positions, at a cost of $16 million per year.

The days of growth funded by unending increases in aid are over. No symbolic gesture is going to change that.

At a time when we are facing unprecedented federal and state budget cuts, my administration has used scarce and dwindling resources to drive transformational change in city government by streamlining services, consolidating departmental functions and totally revamping entire departments, while cutting the city work force by 10 percent. The school district too must use the fiscal challenge to drive change to produce better results for our students.

Being an advocate for education today means taking a candid and hard look at policies that are not generating results. I will continue to support strategic educational investments aimed at transformational change. Despite the city’s desperate financial straits, my budget invested $1 million in Say Yes to Education. I cut funding from city departmental budgets to ensure this funding would be available. I also supported the budget amendment spearheaded by Councilors Pamela Hunter and Ryan McMahon to add $237,000 for Say Yes for Pre-K and summer programming. Supporting Say Yes is promoting a culture of accountability with a laser focus on positively changing results.

Leadership often means having to do the right thing at the expense of doing the easy thing. When considering a proposed tax increase that would add an additional hardship for our most vulnerable citizens, while promising only to be a symbolic gesture propping up the status quo, the right thing to do is say no.